'No excuses' from Kevin Nolan after Cobblers come up short in opening-day defeat at Wigan
Kevin Nolan accepted there were ‘no excuses’ and admitted his side deserved what they got when beaten 3-1 by Wigan Athletic in Saturday’s opening game of the season.
Cobblers actually started relatively well at the Brick Community Stadium and seemed fairly untroubled until a lapse at the back allowed Fraser Murray to convert Joe Hungbo’s cross and break the deadlock with 29 minutes on the clock.
The visitors were then on the ropes until half-time and Jensen Weir headed in a second before Murray’s deflected strike effectively killed the game straight after the restart, even if Michael Forbes did pull one goal back with a towering header.
"It’s a tough start and I’m disappointed because a lot of the work that we’ve done in the summer didn’t show today,” admitted Nolan. “Sometimes it happens in football and you can’t put your finger on why but we’ll certainly be looking at it in the next few days. We’ll look at where we need to improve and we’ll work on it.
"Sometimes it just comes down to winning those 50-50 duels and I felt we missed out on too many today. That’s what upset me more than anything else. There was not a lot in the first half but we give away a really poor goal and then they score from a set-piece, which again I’m not happy about. People got things wrong.
"It’s a new squad and we gave out 10 debuts today so it’s a big turnaround but there are no excuses. We were beaten by a side who were better than us on the day and sometimes you have to take that on the chin.”